


scars

by vaultbug



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, mid-episode 3, phantom pains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:28:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23975998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaultbug/pseuds/vaultbug
Summary: Of everything that sucked the most about being an A.I, Jack would have to say the pains were the worst.
Relationships: Handsome Jack & Rhys (Borderlands)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	scars

Of everything that sucked the most about being an A.I, Jack would have to say the pains were the worst.

Sure, there were worse scenarios. But not being able to snap someone’s neck? That sucked. Strangling was not as satisfying with a robot hand, he knew that from the one time in his office with that subordinate. Annoying Rhys had been fun, at first, but you could only make so many dick jokes before it got stale. (He still hadn’t figured out how to program himself a proper dick to annoy Rhys with. Damn.) 

But the pain, now that was a bitch. 

It was not that an A.I could be pained. There was something  _ like  _ pain indeed; little swirly strings of code and data that gnawed away at his internal coding and were more a pain in the ass to delete rather than the good ol’ physical bruising. The concept of pain existed, but not the actual feeling. If he wanted to, Jack could probably figure out how to wipe that concept right off his circuitry. Forget about it. Completely eradicate it. 

If he wanted to, of course. Sometimes it was nice to feel the bite of it. 

Sometimes.

But Rhys. Man oh man, Rhys felt a lot of pain. A whole mcfucking lot. Poor idiot didn’t know how not to get punched in the face. Always bruised, with the durability of an used tissue. Kicked and slapped. Dragged and spat on. For the entire two months he had been online he had watched Rhys’ back flower into shades of purple and pink, turn red and once, even green. After a run-in with those Psychos his blue tattoos and body and  _ everything,  _ babey, had just been covered purple. Running in those hideous shoes were not good on the feet.

(And yet he just hobbled around anyways. Jack suspected the man was a masochist.)

As amusing as the man’s pain was,the frequency was...annoying. Lil’ bit of an understatement there but he was being nice, you know? Not that it was Rhys’ fault for being lucky enough to be stuck with such a handsome jackass like himself but. He did feel the pain and sometimes other memories would trigger because of it. Never positive memories either. 

Yeah. Sometimes he’d online to taste copper, iron taste so real in his mouth. Close his eyes and he’d see crimson liquid dripping between his fingers, bullet wound shot in the side of his chest. The feeling of a burn seared across the face never went away. A real bitch that was. Unable to scratch or peel it away. 

The taste of shitty pretzels. God. Jack never thought he'd miss those goddamn pretzels.

Yeah. Fun as being an A.I was, he missed his humanity. Missed being able to roll out of bed and wink at himself without having to wait for Rhys to haul himself up, scratch his ass and get to the day. He missed the breeze of the airlock, whistling around his ankles as he watched some unlucky asshole get sucked into the vacuum of space. Especially missed being able to grip something. Robotic arms were not the same. Not at all.

And the pains. God, he hated those pains.

They hadn’t been too annoying, at first. Started off as nonsensical coding beneath his face, stirring when he first onlined his hologram. He was too busy making sense of the Gortys core to even recognize the symptoms as pain, tight scars. Trying to strangle Rhys, snap that thin little neck had been too big on his priority list. It was probably only afterwards, right before Rhys had fallen, when the itch had grown enough to irk him. 

Onlining after that...that had been an experience. Feeling Rhys pain had been overwhelming. Seemed that when you were directly hooked and wired into a person’s thinker, things like nerves and input coding was a  _ bitch _ . He had spent almost five minutes just processing pains, the ache of Rhys’ hand from being crunched, the pounding headache that (until he figured out how to shut down that part of the LED) shook his entire core. 

And when he had finally manually rewrote Rhys’ tech enough to ignore the little pains (not the big. He needed to know big in case Rhys bled out or something) the phantom ones had started rising. His face started itching, scabs untouched. The place where that one bandit had struck him (old memory, back when he was still just Jack and naive, so naive) suddenly started hurting. It fucking sucked, especially the fact he couldn’t do shit about it. 

All he could do was ignore it and let it go past him. 

(like that was easy)

“You’re awfully quiet,” Rhys said from behind him.

He looked up. There was jackass numbero 1, dangling his feet over the caravan and gazing down at him. His blue LED was glinting, a silent beacon in the quiet of the Pandorian night. A part of him wondered if any bandits could see it, and would start practicing sniper rounds in its general vicinity. There was no fear of a bandit ever nailing a sniper shot but it would be fun to see Rhys jump. Oh, how he would squeal. 

“Eh?” He floated up. God, he was glad he learned how to program that. Walking  _ sucked _ . “Didn’t hear ya.”

Rhys looked annoyed at that. “I said, you’re quiet.” Oh, acting the bitch, boo hoo. “Something up?”

_ Yeah, my foot up your ass _ . “What makes you think that, cupcake?” He leaned in, and Rhys leaned away with half a disgusted look on his face. Probably thought he was going to stick his hologram fingers up his nose again. Jack would be lying to say he wasn’t musing on that. “Got something on my face?”

Rhys cocked an eyebrow. His LED grew dim. “Actually, yeah,” the Hyperion lackey said, and there was genuine curiosity etched in it. “You’ve been picking at it.”

He was? Jack looked down at his hands who protested innocently from his pockets. Was it the itching again? Ever since Rhys had hit his head on the steering wheel of the caravan trying to wrestle the wheel away from Gortys the coding had been acting up, pretending the Vault burn was under layers of code that made up his hologram. If he had been absentmindedly scratching where the mark was, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. Back in the organic body he recalled after that bitch had burnt him the skin had flaked and scabbed, to the point where if he didn’t pick at it he’d go mad with all the itchiness. It was only when he stapled that damn mask to his face he had been able to stop.

“Ah, no.” He lied between teeth back at Rhys. “Ain’t nothing.”

Rhys squinted. Honest to god squinted at him. What a slagger. “No, no, no, Handsome Jack doesn’t pick at his face. Something’s up, Jack. What is it?”

Oh, Lord. If it wasn't for the fact that Vaughn had talked about Rhys and his fanboy-ness, he might've called complete bullshit on Rhys' statement. However, the asshole was right. “Geez kiddo, you think you know everything about me? Maybe I have hobbies. Maybe one of them was picking at my face.”

And there was Rhys' infamous frown. Lord, he ought to have that framed and sent into orbit. "Jack," he said. 

Jesus. 

“Aight, fine. I’ll be honest, kiddo.” He curled a finger in his pocket, shot a glare at Rhys. “Phantom pains. Face’s been itching more than the Hodunks over their sisters, you know? Fucking sucks.”

It shut up Rhys. The man fell silent quicker than a skag at a meal -- and that was saying something. Jack almost felt bad about the doe-eyed lackey’s silence. 

Quiet fell. Pandora's night crawled on, the winds brushing over the dunes. In the distance bandits were chanting, and their voices fell and rose in the sounds of the wind. 

“How does it feel?” Rhys asked.

What. Jack had to do a double on that. He laughed. “Did you just ask me how I feel?” 

Rhys backtracked. “Well --  _ look,  _ it’s obviously bugging you, so I --”

“Holy shit, you’re pulling a damn shrink on me.” 

"I'm not!" There was the defensive voice crack he knew. Jack would mock him, if he wasn't already laughing at the man. "I - I just thought -"

"God you're like a little lost puppy. Too cute." Ignoring the swat Rhys tore through his hologram, he slowly (just to watch Rhys squirm) sat down, mimicking the man's posture over the caravan. With a grand movement he gestured toward himself. "Alright I'll bite, Mr. Therapist. Diagnose me."

"How am I -" There was an aborted movement with Rhys to strangle him. Good to see his habits were passing along to Ol' Lackey. “I am  _ not  _ diagnosing you.”

“Aw, come now ol’ chap. You were just asking about my feelings! We gotta have a heart-to-heart now.” He cocked his hand, tried to punch Rhys on the shoulder. His hand phased through. Right.

“Oh my god,” Rhys muttered and put his face in his hands.

“Don’t keep me waiting. Go wild. Diagnose me.”

Rhys did keep him waiting. It took about two minutes of the man sighing into his hands before he finally looked up. Jack plastered an eager expression on his face, just to fuck with the kid. God, Rhys was priceless.

The man mumbled. “What type of pain?”

“Oh, glad you asked, Rhysie ol’ boy!” There was another loud groan, followed by the echoing slap of Rhys’ palm into his face. Should’ve been the metal one in Jack’s opinion. “Well, you see, I’ve got this awful little bitty itch down here --”

Rhys looked to where he was palming and flushed. “Oh,  _ fuck off. _ ”

The rest of the night was filled with his cackling.


End file.
